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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584948">heaven knows we're doing it wrong</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/achillesep/pseuds/achillesep'>achillesep</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Depression, Kind of graphic at some points, M/M, Unrequited Love, kind of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:40:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,273</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/achillesep/pseuds/achillesep</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Leo puts a hand on Nico’s cheek and another on the back of Nico’s neck then leans forward and kisses him like Nico’s life depends on it, and it tastes like blood, like metal, like cheap breath mints, and like Nico’s burning. Nico kisses back and regrets it."</p><p>Nico takes a bullet for Leo but it's more complicated than that. Nico loves Leo but it's more complicated than that. Leo's something far away, something Nico can't have, and why'd they have to make this so difficult?</p><p>Based off the poem "Wishbone" by Richard Siken!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nico di Angelo/Leo Valdez</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>heaven knows we're doing it wrong</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title is from betsy by billie marten<br/>plz check tags for content warnings!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Nico’s writhing in pain, forehead sticky with sweat as his harsh breathing buzzes in his ears. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His stomach, his entire torso, is sticky with cherry-red and cherry-sweet and cherry-horrible blood and he can barely comprehend it. That it’s all his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he brings his hand down to his shirt he realizes it’s glazed in red too, nimble fingers stained with it and mounds of it buried underneath his fingernails. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can’t take it. Looking at it, losing all of it, it’s too much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico turns and throws up and regrets it because moving his abdomen makes it so, so much worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hang on, okay?” Leo says from the driver’s seat. He’s looking at Nico through the driver’s mirror, fiery and pitying gaze piercing Nico’s weary eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up,” Nico snarls. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have jumped in front of the gun, shouldn’t have fallen in disgusting, sour, love. It’s horrific, what we’d do for someone while they make empty promises with beautiful smiles and laughter like bells because Leo will never come through. He’ll swear it all he can but he won’t give Nico what he wants and right about now Nico’s thinking that Leo will always hurt more than the bullet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico rests the back of his head against the window and squirms in his seat as the pain floods his senses. His head feels dull and heavy and his lungs feel like they’re not quite big enough and they’re tearing, ripping, and suddenly he’s coughing up blood. It drips down from his nose and lips and there’s just too much of it. He’s not sure he’ll make it out alive this time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Neeks? Are you alright?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico wants to tell him,</span>
  <em>
    <span> Don’t call me that, don’t call me that because you don’t say it in the way I want you to</span>
  </em>
  <span>, or, </span>
  <em>
    <span>shut up and let me die</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but all that comes out is a rough and slimy cough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pull over,” he manages to croak. They’re on the I-15 in the middle of the desert and there’s nowhere for Nico to go but he says it anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo finds a shoulder and stops the car, rushing out and opening Nico’s door. His eyes look like shattered glass and hurricanes and Nico wants to punch him because this is his fault. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Nico loves Leo enough to let him ruin him, even though Leo will never love him back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo wraps his arms under Nico’s and drags him out of the car with all the grace of a toddler, even though they’ve done this so many times that it should be easy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As soon as Nico’s out of the car Leo adjusts his grip to help him stand but Nico pushes him away and starts walking. He doesn’t care where he’s heading and doesn’t care that this desert will be his graveyard, just wants away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His steps are clumsy and broken and he falls face-first within a few seconds, but it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing?” Leo hisses. He turns Nico onto his back and gazes into his eyes and Nico feels the fight drain out of him because, </span>
  <em>
    <span>god, he’s beautiful. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s delirious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dying,” Nico snarks. Famous last words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo runs to the trunk of the car as Nico writhes and sweats and heaves blood onto the side of the road. He’s staring up at the black night sky with the stars like mirror shards and bleeding out. Everything feels dull. There’s a certain fear named desire crawling in his throat that he hates and craves because it feels like a lifeline right about now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo comes back with a first aid kit and he kneels over Nico. Leo’s curly brown hair frames his large dark eyes and Nico can’t help but stare because Leo really is a sight for sore eyes. The other boy takes a pair of scissors and cuts open Nico’s shirt to see the sea of blood beneath it. Nico watches him swallow thickly. Leo does this when he feels guilty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You saved my life,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico wishes he didn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When we get out of this, Neeks...let’s do something. Anything. Anything you want.” </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Nico laughs broken and crazed and delirious and it sends jolts of pain all through his body but that’s better than hope at this point. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Nico spits out. “You don’t mean that and you—you don’t owe me anything.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It comes out hoarse and ragged and Nico can tell that’s not the answer Leo wanted but he doesn’t care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because this is a routine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Nico was twenty-one and lonely he took a bullet for Leo and his shoes were filled with blood and Leo had asked him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>What do you want, I’ll give it to you, I’m all yours, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but he never came through.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Nico was twenty-two and lonely he stepped in front of a knife for Leo and begged and pleaded for it, for Leo, because he’s pathetic and desperate and Leo’s everything he’s ever wanted and more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now he’s twenty-three and lonely and it’s happening all over again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In Leo’s footsteps there’s always a graveyard, and a piece of Nico will always burn for him because Nico couldn’t change it—the fact that he’d die for him, destroy himself for him, tear himself to pieces, but this time is different. They’re older now. Nico’s tired of the cycle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo takes a tweezer and pulls out the bullet but Nico doesn’t want him to. He can practically picture himself breathing in the metal shards and piecing them together, turning his mouth into a gun and putting the bullet between Leo’s eyes even though that’d be impossible in two ways. First, Nico can’t spit out the bullet. It would never leave that easily. Second, Nico wouldn’t be able to do it. He hates Leo, wants to rip him apart, wants Leo to rip him apart, but he loves him all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a certain sadness to frustration.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You—you know I can’t, not… the way you want me to,” Leo says softly. Because Nico wants to stick his tongue down Leo’s throat and scratch Leo’s back and run his hands through his hair and Leo’s been called too many horrible things for that to feel good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He also has Callie but that’s something else Nico prefers to ignore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico groans instead of responding. Leo goes to grab disinfectant and Nico tries to focus on anything other than the hole in his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He comes back with a bottle of whiskey and pours it on Nico’s chest and Nico nearly cries from the pain of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything feels light. Like he’s floating. And everything feels colder than it should, but not the kind of cold that bites, the kind of cold that weeps and falls over you like a blanket until suddenly you don’t know anything else. It’s the kind of cold that only comes from death.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo takes a needle to Nico’s chest and Nico screams. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s going to be okay,” Leo says, hands shaking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just—just patch me up,” Nico bites. His jaw is clenched and his head feels fuzzier than it should. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The needle goes in and out and in and out and Nico feels heavy tears streaming down his face. He’s ashamed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo always holds his life in his hands in Nico wants it back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico’s choking from another wound, punctured ribs he thinks, but he doesn’t dare tell Leo. There’s nothing he could do anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re all done,” Leo whispers, wiping Nico’s blood on his pants. Nico realizes that Leo’s beautiful in the way all untouchable things are—only pretty because you can’t see the flaws until you’re up close. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The truth is, they’re both too similar. They’re both missing their mothers and missing their self-worth and missing their friends but Leo’s got Callie and Nico’s got a ghost that he can’t force to love him back. Nico understands Leo and hates him because he can’t erase the knowledge. He wants to go back. He wants to kill Leo because he tortures him with his own disgusting desire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly Nico can’t hold it anymore, can’t hide the way his breath hitches and stops. He sits up quickly, opening the knife wound in his stomach, and retches blood onto the pavement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels like he’s underwater. Everything’s too heavy. Everything’s too muffled. Everything’s too much. His eyes are heavy and closing slowly and Nico wants it to end quick. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he starts to fall back to the ground, Leo catches him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico breathes shallowly and catches Leo staring at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What,” he spits.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo’s eyes widen in the way they always do when he’s surprised.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico laughs and blood trails out of his mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want me to say it,” he wheezes. Leo just drags him over to the car and props him against the trunk as Nico battles monsters in his mind, trying to figure out where the night forks in two. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A tear rolls down Leo’s cheek. He’s looking at the wound in Nico’s gut and the yellow and green and red tinges of skin that dance around his chest like a painting, like a prophecy and Nico wants to strangle him but doesn’t have the strength to move his arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop it,” Nico snaps. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop what?” Leo’s voice breaks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Waiting for it. You’re waiting for—” Nico coughs. “—for me to tell you what I want. I’m—I’m not going to.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo looks at him like, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why not? What’s different?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo looks at him with creased eyebrows and shaking hands of curiosity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s pathetic,” Nico hisses because he gets angry when he’s sad and doesn’t know how to process anything without getting frustrated and without blaming someone for something, anything, but Leo deserves this. He’s toyed with Nico’s heart enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo’s got that look in his eye, the one he always has before he does something he regrets and Nico feels fear course through his veins and writhe around his lungs. Leo puts his hands on Nico’s face. Leo puts a hand on Nico’s cheek and another on the back of Nico’s neck. Leo leans forward and kisses him like Nico’s life depends on it and it tastes like blood like metal like cheap breath mints and like Nico’s burning. Nico kisses back and regrets it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Want places itself in the pit of his stomach but he knows better. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He uses all his willpower to shove Leo off of him and it hurts, it’s exhausting, Leo is exhausting just like a fire is exhausting because it takes and it takes and it swallows Nico whole and soon enough there’ll be nothing left of him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Leo says. “I thought—I thought that’s what you wanted.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Nico thought Leo couldn’t hurt him anymore, that this noose of loneliness couldn’t get tighter but Leo’s found a way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Idiot,” Nico sobs. “You think—you think I’m that desperate?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is. But it didn't mean anything to Leo. It was an act of pity. Nico despises it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes Leo too long to respond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Salt mixes with metal and runs along Nico’s bottom lip and he realizes that this is what love tastes like. That this is the cost of it all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re such a child sometimes,” Nico says. He can hardly breathe. He can’t feel his legs. He’s shivering even though it’s a warm summer night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Leo promises. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you were sorry you’d...you’d change,” Nico croaks. “But we keep doing this. And you keep running.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo sits next to him and places his hand in Nico’s own, unlovable hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico can barely feel it. Everything is numb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t have the strength to hold on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isn’t there anything you want? Please, Neeks, I...I owe you that much.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo’s crying. Nico’s so tired. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just—just lay me down in the desert.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s getting harder to keep his eyes open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo clumsily picks up Nico’s limp body and trudges towards the sand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got you,” Leo whispers like a prayer. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico feels the harsh, dead, dry sand prickle his back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He exhales roughly and tenses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do—do you want me to...to kiss you?” Leo asks softly, scrunching his nose like the thought disgusts him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t love me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a fact, a law, Leo can’t love Nico because everything would break. They’d break each other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At least Leo will come out of this whole.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Nico’s thinking: his hands, Leo’s mouth, the blood on the side of the road, and his own private murder like a birthday. A love story. A horror story. A crime scene rests on his tongue, in his heart, his lungs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo sits quietly as Nico watches the stars grow blurry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could you...could you lay down next to me,” Nico pleads even though he shouldn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo does it awkwardly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico feels blood gurgling in his throat so he moves his neck just enough to spit it out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo’s weeping and trying not to alarm Nico. His upper lip is trembling and his eyes are raining acid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have...have a knife in your pocket,” Nico rasps. Leo always has it on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo looks at him with those beautifully far away brown eyes and nods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Kill me,” Nico asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No I—I can’t.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico looks at him with his eyes like a dead fish in the supermarket. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You—you have to choose,” he murmurs. “Love or death.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leo knows what he means. He moves his hand to his side as Nico waits.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nico closes his eyes.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hope u guys liked this ! plz leave comments n kudos if u did, and if u want follow + message me on tumblr @achillesep :)<br/>also highly recommend the poem this is based off of (wishbone) if u liked this because it's...so good</p></blockquote></div></div>
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